Questions & Attitude: No surprise Danica won Daytona 500 pole

Danica Patrick wins the Daytona 500 pole, and while historic, no one seems surprised.

KEN WILLISSPORTS COLUMNIST

Danica wins the pole. Shouldn't I be more surprised?

Frankly, the only real shocker in memory was Loy Allen Jr.'s pole run in 1994. The tone for this one was set during Saturday's practice sessions, when Danica easily had the fastest car. Her Stewart-Haas team posted three of the top five pole laps Sunday. She's running equipment built by Hendrick Motorsports.

And as for Danica's ability to handle high-speed pole days, keep in mind that she routinely ran qualifying laps at 220-plus mph during her seven-year Indy 500 career. Nothing earth-shattering here.

Will she be able to stay up front?

Now THERE'S something that would be surprising. It's one thing to qualify fast, but quite another to stick in that lead pack when the bloodhounds get hungry. But if she gets shuffled back on Thursday and Sunday, it's not because she's timid, just inexperienced compared to the competition – which is a nice way of saying overmatched at this point.

But she gets to lead the Daytona 500 for a week, and no one else can say that.

Is the “umbrella theory” holding true for NASCAR's new Air Titan?

Apparently so. As everyone surely knows, if you want to prevent rain, you take along an umbrella. To invite rain, you leave the umbrella in the car (or worse yet, the garage). So it stands to reason that NASCAR's efforts to develop a state-of-the-art system for quicker drying of a rain-soaked track – its new “Air Titan” – would practically guarantee a dry Speedweeks.

So why was the Air Titan circling the track around lunchtime Sunday?

As one of the Speedway's upper-rung fellas explained when asked, if any kinks develop in the system, you'd rather it happen during a “test run” than when you might really need it. Also – and obviously – he further explained, “it looks cool.”

Speaking of atmospheric adjustments, where does the Speedway store the misters?

Not sure, but probably in the far corner of a garage somewhere on property, you'll likely find the beach chairs, sunscreen and, yes, those misters that are normally only needed for the July race weekend.

We don't want to tell the Speedway's Boys in Operations how to do their jobs, but it doesn't take much effort to see that the forecast calls for mid-80s by the weekend. Sure, it's too little too late for those perennials you forgot to cover Saturday night, but it appears we might skip spring and jump right to early summer.